daybreakooc | OCTOBER ANNOUNCEMENTS

OCTOBER ANNOUNCEMENTS
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Hello and welcome to our first game announcements post. In this post, you will find useful information about what is going on in the game on the OOC side, including important dates to look out for, as well as any news that comes from the moderators. This post can also be used as a Feedback space, for players to sound off on what is working, what isn’t, and to make suggestions on what we can do better. We have a lot of ground to cover this time around, so let’s get to it!

IMPORTANT DATES

OCTOBER 15 Cassandra & Faculty In-Service posts
OCTOBER 15 Game Announcements/Feedback
OCTOBER 17 Mission: Monster Mash
OCTOBER 24 Test Drive Meme, CR Meme & AU Workshop Meme
OCTOBER 31 Open Log: Hallow’s Eve Dance

NOVEMBER (THROUGHOUT) Open Event: Roiling Darkness
NOVEMBER 1 News Bulletin Post
NOVEMBER 8 Player Plot: What You Take With You
NOVEMBER 10 Player Plot: Reflections Lost in Fog
NOVEMBER 12 Full Moon
NOVEMBER 13 Open Event: To Craft the Night
NOVEMBER 15 Cassandra & Faculty In-Service posts
NOVEMBER 15 - Game Announcements/Feedback
NOVEMBER 20 Mission: Grim Confrontation
NOVEMBER 24 Appreciating Fine Art
NOVEMBER 28 Test Drive Meme, CR Meme & AU Workshop Meme

For more in-depth information on what's coming up, check the game calendar here
(Dates added for the remainder of October on this post only.)

GAME FEEDBACK
First of all, we would like to thank everyone who responded to the Feedback post. We have looked at all of the issues and suggestions posted there, and hope to be able to implement most of them in the coming months. This includes revamping and improving the mission system, creating spaces where players can plot for missions and events on the comms, as well as addressing concerns about moderator workloads. We want to ensure that the game is accessible to everyone, and give players a space where they can make suggestions to make Daybreak Academy better.

A general feedback thread will be included in our game announcement posts—including this one! While the previous feedback post is relatively recent, we would love to have players sound off on the improvement ideas discussed in this post.

MOD TEAM CHANGES
When Void, Shini and Ruka created the game, they never imagined that it would have this kind of reception. We never anticipated that Daybreak Academy would be anything but a small game! In order to be able to keep the game running smoothly, the mods have brought on two new helpers to assist with various tasks.

We would like to welcome Echo and Pearl to the moderator team. Echo will be helping the moderator team with mission and event creation and brainstorming, as well as updating our new Game Timeline, which will be rolled out soon; and Pearl will be assisting with keeping lists and posts up-to-date, and managing post uploads. Please help us welcome them on board!

GAME TIMELINE, NEWS BULLETINS & LORE FAQS
Over the next few months, we will be releasing a timeline of important events that have taken place both at Daybreak Academy, as well as in the world thus far. In addition, we will be working on filling out our Lore FAQs, closing some of the holes in the setting, as well as delving into areas that interest the players most. We invite all of you to ask those burning questions that you have, so that they can be added to the page.

Starting on November 1, we will be posting a number of news bulletins making circulation around campus, and around the world. These will mostly cover follow ups to previous missions and events, and will give a more in-depth look into the world at large. We will also be taking player submissions for news bulletins, to be featured in the following months’ posts. These can be related to player plots, things that secret societies are up to, or anything that might be happening around the world. We invite players to help flesh out and influence the setting that their character(s) exist in.

MISSIONS REWORK
Missions were a hot topic on the feedback post, with many players remarking that the system as it is currently doesn’t work well. Missions feel disjointed from the overall plot of the game, and often logs are left unfinished due to the amount of players and characters involved. These are issues that we are actively looking to address, and while there is no easy fix, we will be trying a few different things to help alleviate these problems.

We have taken signup mission down to four characters, one faculty and three students; as well as created a number of open missions/events that do not require signups. We will also be making an effort to include at least one mission during the month that is non-combat focused. This system is by no means set in stone, and if we find that it does not work for the player base, we will revisit this and find other ways to make missions more accessible to everyone.

REVAMPED CASSANDRA POST
Another recurring issue that was brought up is that players don’t feel as if they have a space on the game communities to plot for events and missions. While we will not be able to prevent players from using other spaces to plot, we want to give an options on the Out of Character community—specifically in the Cassandra download post.

Previously, the Cassandra download post was meant to be both an IC space to play out reactions to visions, as well as a place for players to place potential visions for Seers in the game to experience. This post is rarely used for either purposes, so we would like to take the opportunity to rework it as a space for discussion and planning.

We will be removing the IC function for this post, and reworking it as an active plotting post, with information about game events, missions, and player plots for the following month. Seer characters will still receive visions based on the event and mission teasers in this post, and they are welcomed and encouraged to post these reactions on either the Log community, or over the Iris Network.

UPDATED IN-SERVICE POST
With the changes being made to the Cassandra download post, we wanted to look at the In-Service post. Our original intent was that this post would be used by the faculty to divvy out upcoming missions, and chat about things going on at the academy; that won’t be changing. However, we wanted to give players enough time to be able to not only hammer out details of what missions they would like to run, but give more time for them to play out these interactions. The In-Service post will go up every month on the 15th (you can find it here), and will be purely IC, so we encourage you to do any OOC planning on the monthly Cassandra post.

We realize that the In-Service post can feel very stale to play in after a while, so we wanted to mix things up. Every month, a new faculty member will be asked to act as meeting facilitator, adding some variety to the post. This is purely optional, and players are not required to take on this task. Facilitating an in-service meeting could be something like creating (or trying to create) an agenda for the post, or bringing in snacks and back-flipping out a window. Headmistress Duchene doesn’t discriminate—and neither do we!

MOVING FORWARD
When we created this game, we never expected how resonant it would be with all of you. It still amazes us how engaged and proactive the player base is, and we want to find ways to be able to make that easier. There are a lot of changes in the pipeline, but we understand that a lot of the issues that were brought up were very complex, and that finding a workable solution may take some trial and error. We highly encourage you to let us know what is working and what is not, and we will try our best to adjust our approach. Thank you everyone for being awesome during this process!

- The Daybreak Academy Modteam

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